Being Humble, or Having Poor Little Old Me Syndrome?

28 Sep 2017

We describe ourselves with self-deprecating phrases that always start "I'm just …" When talking about our involvement in something important, we say, "I'm just a volunteer." Are we being humble, or do we see those roles as less worthy somehow?

While humility is a virtue, we sometimes quash our potential by thinking humility means avoiding accomplishments. It is not humility. It is called “Poor little old me” or PLOM. PLOM can also be used as a noun to describe people who wallow in self-pity and always think the grass is greener on the other side.

Humility is not avoiding accomplishments. Rather humility is not thinking too highly of yourself, even though you have accomplished much. It's using those accomplishments to bless others and glorify God rather than self, and calling forth the best in others.

To become a successful person, one of the rules we should live by is striving for a No PLOM Zone! Surely, it’s something that doesn’t come easily as talking. We’re pretty sure everyone has those days where envy and bitterness take over, negative emotions run high, and you just want to crawl under your desk, curl up into a ball and sob “why me?”

Obviously, PLOM is very dangerous when it comes to office life. Creativity and productivity will be getting lower, and lower, and lower. Can you imagine if this kind of situation goes around your office?

One thing that everyone should know about PLOM, it is like infectious diseases. It will be spreading easily. When you’re talking to a PLOM, it doesn’t take too long to make you have the same kind of thought, pitying yourself.

Is there someone in your office who is always smiling and have an amazing spirit for everything? To prevent PLOM ruins your life, make friends with those people in your office that are naturally more positive.

Think of that song by Shakira “Try Everything”. Birds don't just fly, they fall down and get up. So, it is very natural when someone sometimes makes a mistake as long as they learn from it and never do the same mistake again.

Makes friends with positive people bring you more advantages than you can imagine. when you’re feeling down, or not hitting your quarterly target, speak to those happy, positive people. They can easily cheer you up. Those people with perfect bounce-back ability who give off positive vibes. They’re guaranteed to put a smile on your face!

Working in a financial area such as Grant Thornton is a high accuracy job. This job absolutely can’t deal with PLOM. If a person keeps pitying himself or thinking that they can’t do the job, so that be. The job will never be done properly.

No matter how hard we work, there are some things that are out of our control. No matter how much effort you put in, you can’t control what happens in the next minutes. To keep PLOM away, remember that you’ve done your best but unfortunately, in some instances, there is nothing you can do to change things. Perhaps, the only thing we can do is simply build a bridge, and get over it. Just make sure the positivity is still inside your mind.